10.8.08

Etoile de la Mer

Here's another Adobe Illustrator work. I used Illustrator for 100% of it except for one stage during the creation of the face. I drew the face in Illustrator, airbrushed it up using Photoshop, then returned it to Illustrator and used "Live Trace" to get it back to vector where I played with it a little more.

What I was surprised/happy with was the pattern on her dress. I made a little pattern and used the "Envelope Distort - using mesh" option to get it to form around the folds. It turned out way better than anything I'd done using the mesh tool before.

What didn't turn out so well would be the type. Not only did I not plan out the design well enough to account for such a long line of text, but Illustrator isn't great with it's "Envelope Distort - using warp" when you're looking for an arc at 100% (Illustrator type on a path gives odd results as well) so I had to do a lot of fine tuning and it still isn't completely right.

The copy is from the last lines of Spe Salve and the angel on the right was ripped off from a bookplate that I like. The rest was "inspired" by lots of stuff...

A great piece of Illustrator artwork you've got going here. Type on a path does do some odd spacing to letters but you just need to kern between letters to adjust the spacing when it becomes odd. Just put the text insertion point between two letters and hit the option (or alt) key and the left and right arrow keys to increase or decrease the spacing. The increments are controlled in the preferences Type > Tracking value. I set mine to 5/1000's of an em.

If I was to make one suggestion towards your illustration I'd desaturate the dark blue background a little towards gray. At the moment it's fighting with Maria a bit. Otherwise a stunning piece of work!

I absolutely love all the patterns you made for this image! It's so intricate. However, the face of Mary does not quite match... The strands of hair around the face are not quite right. Thickish strands like that tend to suggest that the hair is greasy. Otherwise, I find the picture very graceful.